In the field of air transport, more particularly, the airlines have found that, when they offer air routes that are operated several times per day, passengers often have a very specific way of reserving their tickets. For short journeys, where the return is operated in a day, passengers generally reserve the last possible flight and, when they can arrive at the airport earlier, they ask to be transferred to a flight before the one for which they have made a reservation.
The same problem arises when an airline adds a flight because it does not want to increase the capacity of another flight any more. For example, if a line is already being operated by an Airbus 400® or a Boeing 747® and the reservations have already reached the maximum capacity, the airline is obliged to add an aircraft. For this reason, a situation arises in which two flights coexist on the same route five minutes apart. In this case, the airline certainly does not want one of the flights to be full while the other still has seats available for passengers.
The computerized reservation systems currently offered to the airlines do not permit to effectively predict the behavior of certain passengers and thus to adapt to this kind of behavior in order to offer the best transport services while ensuring a maximum financial return on their flights taking into account all relevant factors, especially overbookings.